Commercial Breaks Activity

Comedy Central is the commercial TV station that I have chosen to watch for this homework. The assignment was to choose a TV channel, which contains commercial breaks between programs, and then watch a full hour of the live broadcast - the goal here is to determine what the commercials are aimed at and who they are aimed at, at a particular time, depending on the show.

The timeframe of the program had to be from 8PM-9PM (London Time).

Throughout the hour, two episodes of the "Friends" sitcom series where aired.



This also meant that there was four separate commercial breaks. Each commercial break was approximately 3-4 minutes long, which put an extra 9-10 minutes on each program (the programs are actually 15-20 minutes long, the intervals ensure that they use their full time slot [or as much as possible]).

Since this is the UK version of Comedy Central, British commercials where used throughout. On the first commercial break, there where ads for; first-party shows such as Russell Howard and Impractical Jokers as well as ads for other brands -including "McDonalds", "VOXI" (a mobile network) as well as "Oral-B" (the dental care brand). This shows that the Comedy Central channel is aimed at most ages, as is the "Friends" TV Series.



The second commercial break was slightly shorter, due to it being an interval between the first and second show - it was less targeted and was just advertising more randomized products; such as more first-party shows (in this case it was The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Last Man Standing and The U.S. Office (All of which are entertainment genre)) and there where no third-party commercial ads.

The third; contained an Apple iPhone promotion, 
another "VOXI" promo, "Skechers Footwear" and two more first-party ads for Comedy Central exclusive shows - "Russel Howard" and another "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air" promo. The target audience for these ads is clearly both genders and a younger/teen age as well as young adults/older children.

The fourth and final break contained similar contents to the final one, except it was more aimed at an older audience - which was apparent as there was an ad for "Durex" as well as an ad for "Drive Angry" which is a program that is played at about 11PM and contains adult humor and vulgar language.

It is apparent that the time of day is a connection to the type of commercials aired - the producers are aware that children (under 18's) are more likely to be watching the channel during the daytime (7AM to 9PM) than at night (9PM and afterwards) and that adults are more likely to watch adult shows in the night, so - for legal reasons - the television broadcaster (in this case Comedy Central, owned by multinational conglomerate Viacom) is required to not show innapropriate/vulgar ad campaigns during the day, when children are awake and consuming television content - as to not cause confusion/angry parents.